


raw animal magnetism

by Naraht



Series: Lilia & Yakov [5]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aging, F/M, Friends With Benefits To Lovers, Getting Back Together, Past Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-05 15:58:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16813816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: When Lilia invited Yakov to move in with her (for the sensible purpose of supervising Yuri), she thought that it might finally cure the lingering desire she still felt for him.She never thought that she'd find herself unable to resist his rugged masculine allure.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nineveh_uk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nineveh_uk/gifts).



> Thanks to nineveh_uk for the premise of Lilia being unable to resist Yakov's "raw animal magnetism." None of the rest is her fault.

"I won't be able to come to brunch next week," said Lilia, taking a sip from her mimosa and awaiting the explosion.

Her friends – four other women, the cream of the city's cultural life – looked at her in disbelief from around the restaurant table. Their weekly brunch was a sacred commitment.

"Why, Lilya, where are you going?" asked Nadezhda, who traveled the world with her touring exhibitions but was nonetheless always hungry to hear the details of other people's holiday plans.

In a considered gesture, Lilia downed the rest of her drink and signalled to the waiter for another. "I'm not going away. I've agreed to help Yakov with one of his skaters, to take him on as a project, and..."

"On Sundays?" said Maria in horror.

"No, thankfully it's their rest day. But that's why they're moving in on Sunday."

"Moving where?" A silence of dawning comprehension. "You must be joking. Moving in with _you_?"

Lilia nodded slowly, feeling that she had somehow presented the facts in the wrong order.

"A teenager, at your age?" said Nadezhda. "Didn't you say how much you hated that when you were living with Yakov? I remember..."

"You said _they_ ," pointed out Zoya, whom it was impossible to get anything past.

There was no helping it, thought Lilia. She would have to tell them eventually. So she did it all in a rush.

"Yes, well, this boy lives with Yasha already and he'll need a great deal of supervision. Yura is his name, Yuri Nikiolaievich Plisetsky. He won last year's Junior Grand Prix and Yasha thinks that he could be the next Victor. His ballet is atrocious, but it won't be after he's spent some time with me. I've told Yasha that I'll see to his training and his choreography, but I refuse to take responsibility for enforcing bedtimes. Yasha's used to that sort of thing. So he's promised me that he'll look after all that."

There was silence around the table. Even Zoya faltered before she spoke.

"But... your ex-husband and a boy you hardly know... you've invited them _both_ to live in your apartment with you...?"

"Yes," said Lilia, feeling weak. It was an emotion that she tried to avoid acknowledging. "Only until the next Grand Prix Final, though."

"When is that?"

"December."

And it was now April.

She found herself now unable to explain exactly why this had seemed like a good idea. Yakov had taken her out to dinner at Percorso – admitting afterwards that the restaurant had been Victor's recommendation – and exercised his... no, it wasn't correct to call it 'persuasive charm,' because Yakov had never possessed so much as an ounce of charm.

What he still had, after all these years, and what he had deployed to devastating effect, was his raw animal magnetism.

"He asked you to do it and you just said yes?" said Tamara, obviously baffled.

"I told him," said Lilia Baranovskaya, "that we definitely weren't getting back together."

From the look on the faces of her friends, she could see that this had not helped matters at all.

"And we're not," she added tartly. "In fact can't think of an arrangement better suited to reminding me exactly why we divorced."

In fact this had been one of her motives for suggesting that they move in together – she could never have admitted it to her friends, but this part of the deal had been her own idea. She had thought it might cure, once and for all, the troubling pangs of nostalgia and desire that she'd felt merely sitting across the table from him. Because even watching him eat spaghetti at close range had not quite been enough to do that.

"I should say so," said Maria, whose own messy divorce from a prominent oil executive had made minor headlines at the time.

"Not even brunch..." lamented Zoya.

"One Sunday," snapped Lilia. "That's all."

***

It was none of their business, she told herself. There was no reason that any of her friends would need to hear another word about this until Yuri had won a gold medal. Several gold medals. And then she would say _I told you so_.

In thinking this she had reckoned without the inevitable encounters of daily life.

It was an ordinary rest day when Nadezhda stopped by in the morning to return some art books that she had borrowed from Lilia, since she would be away the following Sunday. When Lilia had sent the email arranging this, she had thought nothing of it; she would hand the books over at the door and the world would go on its way.

But she had forgotten about the appointment, and she was still in her room putting on her makeup when the knock came on the door. She remembered immediately. She also remembered that she had last seen Yakov relaxing on the couch in the sitting room with his second cup of coffee, dressed in his traditional summer morning attire of a white vest and boxer shorts. He was closer to the door than she was.

Although she put down her lipstick as quickly as she could, by the time she got out to the sitting room, the door was already open. Yakov was trading greetings with Nadzezhda, who leaned around his bare, sturdy shoulder to give Lilia a faintly amused look.

"Nadia is just dropping off a few books," said Lilia, who wanted to bring the encounter to a close as quickly as possible.

"And so I have," said Nadezhda. "I've given them to your new housemate."

Only now did Lilia notice that Yakov was holding the stack of books in his arms.

"I hope you have a good trip," she said, attempting to keep her self-possession. "When are you back? Tuesday, you said?"

Sadly she was never to find out, because that was the moment that Yuri appeared, still wet from the shower, with only a towel wrapped around his narrow waist.

"Lilia Mikhailovna, where are my sweatpants? You know, the leopard print ones with a stripe down the side. I was wearing them yesterday."

"No doubt they're lying wherever you threw them when you took them off," snapped Lilia.

Lilia, who had never wanted children of her own – and indeed had gone to some lengths to prevent them from coming. Lilia, who had nonetheless spent a good part of her marriage with a young skater or two in the house. Lilia, who had brought this upon herself. She wanted to sink through the floor and disappear. But she held her head high, because she had never allowed herself to do anything else.

"Oh, hi," said Yuri, belatedly noticing Nadzezhda. "I'm Yuri."

"Hello," said Nadezhda, looking amused. "I thought you must be."

"Thank you for returning the books, Nadia," said Lilia, stepping forward and taking control of the situation. "Yes, this is Yura. And you know Yasha already. But you shouldn't let us keep you from your other errands."

"No, I have a lot to do – I'm leaving for the airport this afternoon. And it looks like you're busy here yourself. I'll see you when I get back, Lilya!"

Closing the door behind her friend, Lilia knew in her heart that the rest of the brunch group would have heard the gossip by the time Nadezhda made it to the airport.

"You could have offered her a cup of tea," said Yakov, as if wanting to demonstrate that he didn't resent the interruption to his typical rest day routine of reading the newspaper in his boxer shorts.

"No," said Lilia. "I couldn't have. Actually."

***

Perhaps unbelievably, it was Yakov whose presence she found almost impossible to bear. 

She could never forget that he was there in her apartment, sleeping in her guest room. Lying in bed at night she could hear his snoring, gentled by the single wall that separated them. Her bed, on this side of the wall; his bed, on just the other side. It drove her mad – but of course that was annoyance rather than desire.

Even the scent of him tormented her. When she leaned close to grab something off the kitchen counter, she breathed in something distinctively and compellingly Yakov. Even the pillows of her couch started to smell like him. She didn't know what it was. In the bathroom, furtively, she uncapped his eau de cologne – the same one he'd been using for the past twenty years. She picked up his bar of pine soap from the edge of the bath and gave it a sniff. None of them smelled the same as he did. There was some alchemy at work, some mysterious extra ingredient that could only be Yakov himself.

It must be biology, Lilia concluded. There was some blind genetic imperative that had drawn her to him at that reception back in 1980. It was a reproductive instinct without any purpose, because they had never reproduced. It was purely impersonal and irrational – and, tragically, she hadn't realised this at the time.

If she found herself picking up a pillow from his side of the couch and pressing it to her face, inhaling to the bottom of her diaphragm, this was no different from the pleasure she might have had in smelling a rose. Certainly enjoying the lingering scent of a rose was no reason to marry it. If only she'd known.

She did her best to remind herself of all the reasons – besides his snoring – that Yakov was completely unsuitable and undesirable as a partner. She made a habit of gazing at him when he was, in theory, at his least attractive. Like over the breakfast table in the morning when he was rubbing his bleary eyes, his old ratty bathrobe tied snugly underneath his belly, that ridiculous long fringe of grey hair sticking out in every direction. She longed to reach out and smooth it down with her own hand.

He was old and fat and bald, she told herself, although this was hardly news. Albeit to a somewhat lesser extent, he had been old and fat and bald when they had divorced a decade ago. He'd been old and fat and bald seven years ago, and the same three years ago, when they'd found themselves falling into bed together despite themselves. The sex had been absolutely amazing.

Remembering those nights, Lilia smiled into her cup of tea.

"Two minutes steeped at 80C," said Yakov proudly, as if being able to remember how to competently brew green tea were some sort of major achievement. "Just the way you like it."

"My champion," said Lilia. She meant it to sound sarcastic. She was afraid that it hadn't.

"I could hear you snoring last night," she added sharply.

Yuri smirked.

"So your hearing hasn't entirely gone," said Yakov.

"Yasha, you could wake the dead."

"She's right," put in Yuri.

Yakov scowled at him. "This conversation doesn't involve you."

Then he got up to clear the dishes from the table. Lilia studied him from behind. What did an 'old man' look like, anyway? When she thought of the concept in the abstract, she envisioned the sort of specimen you encountered in a sanatorium or on the beaches at a Black Sea resort: a walking pot belly underpinned only by skimpy speedos, absurdly spindly legs, and no ass whatsoever.

Yakov's body was nothing like that. He'd always been sturdily built, much more powerful than graceful. She knew how much pain that had cost him; he worshipped grace, even if he lacked it himself. But he had other compensating advantages. He might be nearly seventy but he was still on the ice every day. Although he was heavier, his thighs and calves were still strong and muscular. And – unmistakably, even hidden under a bathrobe – he still had the miraculous ass of a figure skater.

He turned from the sink to look at her over his shoulder. "What is it?"

"You're splashing water everywhere," said Lilia, lowering her gaze again.

It was impossible. Was she meant to look at nothing but the floor in her own kitchen?

***

The irony of fate had brought her together with Yakov again, into the same apartment if not the same bed. For the majority of their marriage they had lived separately most of the year, he in Piter and she in Moscow, eight hours travel by overnight train. 

And yet a few years ago the politics at the Bolshoi had finally driven her out. It was doubly ironic that she had survived all the excesses of the Soviet bureaucracy, only to succumb to the fear of a little splash of acid in the face. But that was life. She had made the choice to reinvent herself yet again, accepting an invitation to become a pedagogue and occasional choreographer at the Mariinsky. Pastures new and all that – except that it had also brought her back into the orbit of her ex-husband.

Would it have made any difference if her move had happened sooner, before the divorce? She wondered. For years she'd thought that the distance was why their marriage had survived as long as it had. Any time they had been together for more than a week or two at a stretch, things had degenerated into icy silence (hers) and impassioned, irrational tirades (his).

And yet despite the fact that they had now been living together for two months, they hardly argued at all, apart from the usual bickering over the need to unload the dishwasher or the state of the bathroom sink. 

He cooked for the household almost every day, as many of his mother's hearty traditional recipes as were compatible with Yuri's meal plan. Lilia had put on nearly two kilos eating his _plov_ , but she almost forgave him for this. Almost.

Every evening after Yuri had lost interest and left the table, they found themselves dragging out the meal over coffee, talking over their work.

Yakov quickly roused himself to righteous indignation at any hint of injustice against her at the Mariinsky, a production postponed or a dancer of hers passed over for a plum role. He had taken her side when she was a young girl in the _corps de ballet_ , fighting for the most minor of roles or understudy parts; he had taken her side when she was a newly minted _prima_ chafing under the last few months (had they but known) of oppressive Soviet cultural policy. His loyalty had warmed her heart then; so too it did now.

In turn he came to her with his own troubles at the Sport Club. He ranted at her, as he always had, about the idiocies of students, staff and the national federation alike. He asked her for advice and occasionally he surprised her by being willing to take it.

He was a born storyteller, she thought, and wondered why she hadn't realised it before. He vividly acted out all his indignations at the small stage of her kitchen table, an eloquent gesture of the hand here, the arch of an eyebrow and subtle flare of a nostril there. She watched, with a sort of fascination, his performance for an audience of one.

By the time of their divorce she had lost any patience for listening to his endless complaints, jangling as they did against her own tightly-strung nerves. Now she was a little more patient, although she still found herself sighing when he got onto his favorite topic of late: Victor's defection from the Sport Club.

"If he cared about getting experience as a coach, he ought to have come to me. I wouldn't have turned him away, even though I knew he'd be terrible at it. He could have learned from me. I'm not closed-minded. He should have realised that by now!"

Lilia nodded, not that Yakov appeared to notice. He carried on without pausing to draw breath.

"But of course he hasn't realised that. For Vitya to call himself a coach is an insult to the profession. And to me! He has zero interest in coaching. He cares about nothing but getting into Katsuki's pants. That isn't coaching! He's just being led around by his dick."

Now she just had to say something. "Isn't that what Oleg Petrovich used to say about you?"

At the mention of his old coach's opinion, Yakov's mouth opened soundlessly for a moment; his face turned brick red. But he recovered quickly.

"Not when it came to coaching," he said. "Never! You know that, Lilia. I have _standards_. Whatever else I might have done, I never..."

She had no interest in discussing _whatever else_ he might have done. It was water under the bridge. Even if it had been otherwise, it would have had no bearing on their current, entirely professional relationship.

"I know," she said. "I know."

"But Vitya... I don't understand it! Did I not raise him from a little boy? Did I not sacrifice for him? You know that I did! Did I not show him a good example? And after all of this, the minute he gets bored, he drops everything and runs off to Japan! Is this how he repays me in the end?"

It was the same ground he had covered a thousand times already. It did no good. He only sunk deeper into his indignation, like a car spinning its wheels in icy slush. His anger would never bring Victor back.

"Yasha, Yasha," she said finally. "Enough. I know. Is it really worth ruining your evening over?"

 _And mine?_ she might have added – but she refrained.

Once upon a time if she had dared to say such a thing to him, however gently, he would have turned his anger upon her instead. As if she didn't care. As if she delighted in seeing him suffer. As if she were the enemy.

Now he shut his mouth, looked into his empty coffee cup, and sighed.

"Maybe not," he said grudgingly. "I suppose not. But I _still_ can't believe that he..."

And then, miracle of miracles, he interrupted himself before she could step in: "You're right. Never mind. It's a waste of time."

His hand had been clenched. Now, as if in submission to her wishes, he laid it open and helpless on the table. Lilia fought down the instinct to rest her own hand on top of it – but she refrained. She knew he wouldn't appreciate it.

***

Should she not be able to touch him once in a while? As a friendly act, as a gesture of congratulation or of sympathy? As a light warning to get out of her way in their small kitchen? Words were so clumsy sometimes. A decade after their divorce, surely they were beyond the point of needing to behave as if they were two magnets with repelling poles.

And yet any time she reached out to him, however lightly or casually or inconsequentially, he shied away from her. He coughed, or shifted, or found some excuse to step away.

Did he have someone else? The idea had never occurred to her before, but she supposed it was possible. Yakov was a man after all, with the appetites of a man, and his rugged good looks had not entirely deserted him. Surely women – other women – would be only too eager to make him their own.

Lilia wondered how she would know if he did have a lover. He came home from the rink before six o'clock every evening; on rest days he was home almost all day unless they went out to do errands. So she could hardly be the jealous or demanding type. Perhaps, Lilia surmised, he had found someone at the Sport Club. 

Whenever she visited to work on Yuri's choreography or to use their – frankly inferior – dance studios for a lesson, she dressed herself as if she were going into battle. She wore her very highest heels. She cinched her belts a little tighter. She lingered in front of the mirror, carefully brushing powder across her cheekbones (which she had often been told were her best feature) and wondering, not for the first time, if there was any way to make her small ears slightly less prominent. It was not exactly that she thought Yakov, who saw her around the apartment in every possible state of _déshabillé_ , would care, although he surely would notice. Nonetheless it always paid to intimidate the enemy.

If there was an enemy at all. Lilia studied the women at the Sport Club carefully – not neglecting the competitive skaters, because not all of them were teenagers and such a romance was hardly unheard of, whatever Yakov might say. After a while she began to scrutinize the men as well, because it would have been foolish to assume that his tastes were immutable. And yet between all the skaters and assistant coaches and trainers and physios and sports doctors and secretaries and receptionists, she found precisely nothing and no one of note.

It ought to have set her mind at ease. In a way it did; in another way, it didn't.

"I never expected you to be here so often," said Yakov when he found her in the canteen one afternoon drinking a cup of hot chocolate, a rare indulgence.

"You wanted me to be involved in his training?" snapped Lilia. "I'm involved."

In fact she was almost at loose ends. Her duties as a pedagogue at the Mariinsky were lighter during the summer. With most of the company on tour, she might have taken on her own international engagements – it wasn't as if she wasn't in demand, either as a choreographer or a teacher of masterclasses – but her responsibilities to Yuri had kept her in the country. So here she was at the Sport Club instead, stalking her ex-husband's imaginary girlfriends.

"I'm not complaining!" said Yakov, holding his hands up in surrender. "Come in whenever you like, if you have the time! The door is open!"

A few heads turned at that. Lilia knew that she was being scrutinized keenly in turn. She had heard the whispers following her in the hallways of the Sport Club: _the former prima of the Bolshoi... Yakov Davidovich's ex-wife._ It wasn't the worst they could have said. Whispers had followed her all her life; she was used to it. Truth be told she was rather proud.

Yakov wandered off to join the canteen queue. Lilia's eyes followed him. He was wearing a tighter pair of trousers than usual and it did absolutely no harm to the view of his ass. After collecting a cup of coffee, he returned to her table. She hadn't expected that.

"I'm waiting for Yuri's hip-hop class," said Lilia, feeling as if she owed him some further justification for her presence. "I thought I would observe it today."

He took a sip of his coffee and made a face. It wasn't clear whether this was a reaction to the coffee or her choice of words. "Observe? You mean sit and glare disapprovingly?"

"I don't have to be personally fond of the style to understand that it's necessary for him to master it."

"I know you," he said, amused. "You're resourceful. You'll find something to disapprove of."

"That remains to be seen."

Yakov just shook his head and checked his watch. She had nearly ten minutes still to wait, as no doubt he knew.

"You should come and drink the rest of that in my office," he said. "It's warmer in there. The chairs are more comfortable."

Not to mention that it was more private, although anyone who was watching could hardly fail to notice them leaving together. Gratified, Lilia rose to her feet and followed him to his office.

He behaved as if her presence were nothing out of the ordinary, as if they spent every day like this, companionably side by side. After she settled herself in the big arm chair in the corner, he sat down at his desk and started going through a pile of papers, rubbing the side of his nose thoughtfully as he studied them. Lilia could have brought herself to be offended by this, if she had wanted; instead, unexpectedly, she was touched.

She sat and sipped her hot chocolate slowly, studying him. His little exhalations and sighs, the deepening or lessening of the frown lines across his wide brow when he started to read a new document; the motion of his arm scrawling his signature across a page. He'd rolled up his sleeves a little, as if recognising even this small task with the dignity of a physical action. Behind him, through the window at the back of the office, a corner of the rink was visible. Far below them skaters circulated, black flecks against the white ice. Every so often he would turn his head to monitor the activity on the rink.

 _He's a good man,_ she found herself thinking. _A good man._

Why she should have been inspired to this observation by his diligence at signing paperwork, she had no idea. So Russia should have been overflowing with good men – and the Soviet Union before it. So many signatures, so many orders. But this wasn't the time to think about that.

Wanting to distract herself, she looked up at his office wall. It had acquired many more pictures over the past decade – magazine covers, competition podiums, Yakov himself standing alongside various dignitaries – but she thought she could still remember where her own photograph had hung. She had insisted on making the final choice herself, because she had been unable to bear the thought of any imperfection in her figure or her form being proudly displayed to Yakov's colleagues and associates. And now it was gone. So much for all her care and attention. She ought to have spent it on something that mattered.

Yakov looked up from his paperwork, catching her in contemplation of the wall.

"Do you like the one of me and the president?" he asked. "That one's new."

She studied it. Yakov's expression was solemn and unreadable. He had looked exactly the same – albeit with more hair – when he was photographed with Brezhnev.

"I'm not sure I'd be proud of it." 

"What's not to be proud of? He pays our bills."

That won a sceptical look from her; no doubt Yakov had expected it.

"Didn't _you_ accept a medal from him last year?" he added.

Lilia shrugged. "One can't turn down that sort of thing."

"One can't?"

"Well, you certainly don't seem to be able to," she said.

So many compromises they had made over the years, both separately and together. Who else understood exactly what they had been through? Yakov shook his head and chuckled in rueful acknowledgment of the truth of human frailty.

"But Yasha," she added, struck by a sudden impulse, "you're a good man."

He startled, looked at her warily as if he thought she was mocking him. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I was thinking it before. So I thought you ought to know."

Having made her declaration, Lilia was overcome with embarrassment. She didn't know what would be worse: if he responded by professing his faith in her own goodness, or if he refrained. Personally she had always thought of herself as someone who did what needed to be done and willingly accepted the consequences. Whether that was goodness was debatable.

She covered her embarrassment by rummaging in her bag for her phone. _3:02pm._ Well past time to leave. 

She stood up and slung her bag onto her shoulder. "And I'm late for Yuri's class. I'll see you tonight."

If Yakov replied, she had gone before she could hear him.

***

When Yakov and Yuri went away for an early-season competition, she ought to have been grateful for the respite. A few days without a teenage boy's untidiness and dirty laundry and endless hot showers. A few days without Yakov's snoring and grumbling and mysterious, inexplicable sexual magnetism. Yet the apartment seemed empty without them.

She wasn't entirely alone, of course: she had Yuri's cat for company. She had never had a pet before; she had been extremely doubtful when Yuri arrived with the cat carrier in his hand, and had immediately banished the litterbox to the furthest corner of the apartment. Still, it turned out that she and Potya understood one another. The cat, whose gorgeous fur coat surpassed any of the more expensive ones hanging in Lilia's closet, spent her days stretching, grooming herself, posing and leaping beautifully, looking for warm places to rest, and dreaming of her next meal. In other words, Potya behaved just like a ballet dancer.

"It's lucky for you that I'm around," she told the cat, mock-severely.

Potya just blinked her eyes slowly at Lilia and then rolled over to show off her furry belly.

With Yakov and Yuri gone, Lilia could eat nothing but fruit and yoghurt for dinner if she felt like it. She could play her own music on the stereo without anyone mockingly imitating Kate Bush's falsetto. She could improvise contemporary dance in the kitchen while waiting for the kettle to boil without feeling as if she ought to be on her dignity around her student. She could wander through her own apartment without a touch of makeup on her face, dressed in anything she liked or in nothing at all. It was a return to the total, blissful independence that she had long deserved. And she hated it.

On the third night of their absence, when she should have been going to bed, she found herself instead walking into the empty guest room. Yakov's room. He had clearly tidied it up before leaving. His phone and his heavy gold Rolex were absent from the bedside table, as were all but one of the books – a biography of Akhmatova that he hadn't started reading yet. All his clothes apart from the ones he'd taken with him were hanging neatly in the closet. Impulsively she lifted a cardigan to her nose, but it was newly washed and smelled only of laundry detergent.

Lilia turned and looked at the bed. Although Yakov had made it before he left, the sheets were a little rumpled, not new. Underneath the blanket, she imagined that they still bore the broad imprint of his body. After a moment of hesitation she slid out of her bathrobe, threw back the blanket and climbed into bed.

Immediately, deliciously, she was surrounded by the scent of him, conjuring up memories of him in the sheets beside her. Their first bed, in their own first apartment: old and sagging, springs poking out, squeaking loudly and rustily beneath them. She twisted to rub her face against the pillow for a moment. Then – imagining him pressing her down into the mattress, imagining the rhythm they might set together – she slid one hand between her legs.

In the morning she woke with a cotton pillowcase pressing lines into her cheek. Her own pillowcases were silk, but that was in the next room. She was still in Yakov's bed. For a moment she felt guilty. Then she fell back asleep.

Hours later, when she finally got out of bed, she wondered whether she should wash the sheets. Probably it would be the polite thing to do; certainly it would be the sensible thing. She stood for a moment beside the rumpled bed, which they had shared only in her imagination – and then she pulled the duvet up.

Maybe he would never notice her own scent lingering on the sheets. Maybe he would. If so, he would just have to wonder.

***

In the evenings after dinner they often found themselves together in the sitting room, the television on in the background. Sometimes Lilia watched a football match, which her companions cordially ignored: Yakov half dozed, his head drooping over a book, while Yuri stared at his phone. And they called themselves sportsmen! 

Other times it was Lilia who wished that they could turn the television off. Stepping into the sitting room one evening, she felt all her muscles tensing a split second before she realised the cause: the overture to _Swan Lake_ was playing. She might be at home, nearly a decade into retirement, but her body didn't know that. Preparing itself without her conscious will, it expected to find itself on stage any moment.

"They're showing your _Swan Lake_ ," said Yakov. "It'll be good for Yura to watch."

Lilia made an empty noise of agreement as she sank down onto the couch next to Yuri. A glance was enough to answer the question of which _Swan Lake_ : it was the 2006 Bolshoi production, in which she had been partnered by Sergei Lisitsyn. In other words this evening was going to be a special circle of hell.

And Yuri didn't even appear to be benefitting from her suffering.

" _Is_ he watching?" said Lilia acidly. "Yura, show some respect for the artists by putting down your phone."

He did as she asked. "I'm sorry, Lilia Mikhailovna. You weren't on stage yet."

"I'm not the only artist in the world," replied Lilia, inwardly gratified. But the feeling didn't last for long.

As soon as Sergei made his entrance in Act 1, she found herself both transfixed and embarassed. When he had risen from the _corps de ballet_ to become a Bolshoi principal only three years after his graduation from the Moscow State Academy of Choreography, she had found herself unable to look away. She had thought herself in awe of his gifts. Now, watching his showy poses as Siegfried in the opening scene, she was faintly ashamed. How could she have been so silly? She had been in her forties already, certainly old enough to know better.

What had the attraction been? It wasn't a difficult question, she thought, as he launched into his Act 1 _pas de trois_ solo with its dramatic _entrechats_ and _tours en l'air_. It wasn't a difficult question because practically all of it was visible onscreen. Once Sergei had started partnering her, she had been swept away – by him, by the delusion that it was possible for her to turn back time, by the distraction from a marriage that had already been on borrowed time. In retrospect, of course, it was blindingly obvious that Sergei had possessed little to recommend him besides his talent.

"Huh," said Yuri. "That guy's pretty good."

"Of course he's good," snapped Lilia, giving some small vent to her confused feelings. "It's Sergei Lisitsyn. Haven't you heard of him? Next you'll be asking who's dancing Odette!"

"Is he famous or something?" asked Yuri. 

"The _enfant terrible_ of the Bolshoi," said Yakov dryly. "Or of the Royal Ballet now."

From Yuri's confused look, it was clear that this comment had brought him no enlightenment. This was unsurprising, because Yakov had directed it pointedly at Lilia.

"They should have shown the other one instead," she said, wondering whether she should get up to make some tea, claim a headache and go to bed early. "The older production."

Yakov scoffed. "The August Putsch _Swan Lake_?"

Of all the trials she had faced during her career as a ballerina, she had never expected to unwittingly become the face of a coup attempt. It was so embarassing. People still came up to her to tell her about that moment in 1991 when they had turned on the television to find the news, only to see her dancing instead. Half the Russian population would always associate their memories of the coup with her _Swan Lake_. She would never live it down. For all the wrong reasons, for better or worse, it was her most famous role.

"What are you talking about?" asked Yuri.

"Ancient history," Lilia replied. 

Then she added: "Whatever the associations might be, that one was better."

"This one isn't bad," said Yakov, an unreadable tone. "Whatever the associations might be."

In fact it was very good. It might have been the best she had ever danced, if one ignored – as she could not – the almost invisible 'tells' of a body beginning to break down after decades of hard use. Her body had been leaner and more scientifically trained than it had been twenty years earlier. Her technique more finely honed, her artistic instincts fully developed. And yet if artistic instincts were all that mattered, she would still be dancing now.

She looked sideways at Yakov's craggy, rugged profile. Age had only made his bone structure more dramatic: high cheekbones, broad jaw, emphatic nose. His mouth turned down a little at the corners, a permanent furrow in his heavy brow, that resting half-scowl of his. His eyes, still that surprisingly clear blue, were focused on the screen. Watching her. 

She would have given a great deal to know exactly what he was thinking.

Instead she shifted herself on the couch, pushing a pillow into a slightly more comfortable position behind her. She crossed her legs, then crossed them again the other way. After picking up her Akunin novel from the side table, she put on her reading glasses and attempted to lose herself in the latest adventure of Erast Fandorin. It didn't work. Instead she found herself peering over her glasses at her younger self.

At the time she had felt ancient, two decades older than her partner. Now, ten years on, though she could see the effort it had cost her to present an image of ease, the Lilia on screen seemed lithe and youthful in comparison with her present self. To still be dancing for the Bolshoi Ballet! What bliss. Could she ask for any more than that?

Well. She stole another glance at Yakov. Perhaps she could.

Yakov glanced back at her. "You're not watching?"

"I've seen it before," said Lilia, shrugging.

It was the understatement of a lifetime. Simply hearing the music was enough to bring the memory of each step and gesture flooding back into her body. She could be ninety and senile and she would never forget how it felt to dance _Swan Lake_. Nor would she forget how it had felt to have Sergei's steadying hands on her waist, to leap into his arms for a lift knowing that she could trust him utterly.

Sometimes she regretted not having been able to dance with Yakov, to really dance. Of course he was a decent ballroom dancer, good enough that when they'd taken the floor together at receptions, all eyes had turned to the two of them. ( _But they were really looking at me,_ thought Lilia.) 

And naturally he'd had ballet training. He'd practiced it diligently through the whole of his competitive career. But never partnering – there had been no need.

Sometimes she thought that if she and Yakov had been able to dance together, they would have understood one another better. Not that she and Sergei had understood each other at all. She had never admitted to Yakov exactly how badly he had treated her. She had her pride; she she ought to have known better. And she would have died sooner than appear to be playing for sympathy.

So she sat and watched two ghosts dancing together.

Thankfully Yuri's bedtime came before the final act. Without comment he got to his feet and went off to his room, leaving Lilia and Yakov the lone audience for the romantic tragedy that Lilia and Sergei had embodied onstage a decade earlier.

"I was..." Lilia began. Then she faltered, unable to compass in words what she meant to express. "I didn't..."

"It's not important," said Yakov. "As you said, it's ancient history."

How often did the great Lilia Baranovskaya say _I'm sorry_? The words stuck in her dry throat. And yet she wanted desperately for him to know.

"Turn it off," she said. "I don't want to watch it any more."

He made a questioning noise.

"Please," she added. It was as much a sacrifice of her pride as she could manage. 

He turned it off, looked silently at her for a moment, and reached out to her across the gulf that Yuri's departure had left between them. She thought that he was about to take her hand. Instead he patted it awkwardly and then looked away again. Then he heaved himself to his feet. 

"Well. It's probably time for me to start getting ready for bed anyway."

 _Take me to bed with you,_ Lilia wanted to say. _Take me back. Or just take me. That's all I want._

Instead, in perverse reaction, she found herself yawning widely. 

"Oh dear," she said, mid-yawn, covering her mouth with her hand. "I must be getting old."

"Never," said Yakov.

With that single gallant word, he left her alone in the sitting room.

Once she was certain that the bedroom door was safely closed behind him, she turned on the television again and watched Act 4 with the volume turned down so low that she could hear nothing at all. It didn't matter. She knew every note of _Swan Lake_ by heart.

***

Lilia was conscious that she had already made the first misstep, denying a possibility that she should never have acknowledged. _This doesn't mean that we're getting back together,_ she had said to Yakov. At the rink. In front of Yuri, even. 

On stage, she well knew the consequences of what might seem at first to be a tiny error – a failure to get properly over the box in pointe shoes, a badly spotted turn, a slight wobble, so easily cascading into a fall or an injury.

If she had been on stage, she would have known how to catch and correct such an error before it could become something more serious. But this was something different. All those years of training, those decades of honing her skill, had taught her absolutely nothing about how to talk to her ex-husband.

 _This doesn't mean that we're getting back together._ The idea should never even have occurred to her, but it had. Recently it had begun occurring to her more often.

The one consolation was that her desire for him was – of course – purely physical. This made things simpler, because Lilia knew how to deal with physical needs. Was desire like hunger, which was often best resisted? Or was it like thirst, which ideally should be satisfied even before it was felt? For a long time she asked herself this, her desire strengthening all the while.

Finally she decided that perhaps it was best to drink when you were thirsty. She would get it out of her system. 

It was time to seduce Yakov.

***

What made things difficult was that they were never alone. If Yuri was not with Yakov, rehearsing, then he was with her, dancing – if not that then he was with both of them together, working on his choreography or going to a costume fitting. If not that, then he was at home in her apartment. He had fewer friends and less of a life than any fifteen-year-old Lilia had ever encountered apart from Victor Nikiforov.

As a teacher she approved, but as a woman she was dismayed. Her solution was simple: she started giving Yuri ballet tickets.

"You will go to the ballet every Tuesday night," she informed him. "For the next few weeks to the Mikhailovsky. And then, once their season starts, to the Mariinsky. You will watch and you will learn. I will expect a full report every week when you come home."

She half expected him to kick against the traces. She half expected him to resell his ticket on the theatre steps and use the money to go out drinking. This was the sort of thing that her own generation would have done. In some ways she felt that the youth of today were a less resourceful and inventive lot. Perhaps they had never felt the need.

Either way, the youth of today had YouTube. Therefore she was confident that, by whatever means, he would familiarise himself with the ballet that he was meant to be attending.

"I will get you a ticket," she continued. "If you would like to take a friend, tell me at least a week in advance and I will get tickets for them as well."

"Thank you, Lilia Mikhailovna," said Yuri, like the obedient student he sometimes pretended to be.

On Tuesday night he dressed himself in the new suit she had bought him for press conferences and competition banquets, got into the car she had ordered for him, and – one presumed – went off to the Mikhailovsky to see Prokofiev's _Cinderella_. 

A blessed silence fell across the apartment. Yakov didn't seem to realise what a momentous occasion this was. He was sitting quietly on the couch reading his biography of Akhmatova. He had made it as far as the siege of Leningrad, as he had been telling her and Yuri over breakfast.

"We should have a drink to celebrate having him out of the way for once," said Lilia. "Shall I get the vodka?"

"It's a Tuesday night," said Yakov, turning a page in his book.

"What, is one not allowed to drink vodka on a Tuesday now?" Lilia retorted.

Once she had opened the bottle, he could hardly turn down a drink. 'To good health,' was the first toast (his). 'To Prokofiev,' was the second (hers). After that they got into the rhythm of things.

"Do you think he'll actually use the ticket?" she asked, resting her head on the back of the couch and turning to look at Yakov.

"He'd better!" he replied. "After you went to the trouble of getting it for him."

"It wasn't any trouble. It's all online these days."

"Still. It's a privilege! When I was his age..."

Perhaps it was the vodka that had put them both in the mood for reminiscing. But Yakov didn't finish his sentence. Lilia took up the theme instead.

"Do you remember when you first took me to dinner at Aragvi?"

He could hardly have forgotten. It had only been the second time they'd met.

"Did you ever wonder how I got away at such short notice? I told everyone at the Bolshoi that I had a special Komsomol meeting. And then I got my friends to go to the ordinary meeting and tell the Komsomol secretary that I had to be at a very important rehearsal."

Yakov laughed. "So that explains your tragic lack of political consciousness."

After having dinner and strolling together across what felt like half of Moscow, they had found themselves kissing rather desperately in a passage leading to a courtyard, not nearly secluded enough in the relentless twilight of summer. An old woman keeping watch over the apartment block had come out to shout at them. Unmarried, they'd had no hope of getting a hotel room. 

She vividly remembered the maddening, frustrated, raw desire that had tormented her at nineteen. This was because she felt the same way now.

As she and Yakov drank together, she mustered up her most seductive looks, heavy-lidded and unabashed. If they had been delivered onstage in a performance of (say) _Carmen_ , they would have melted the heart not only of Don José, but also the dance critics of _Kultura_ , the _New York Times_ and _Le Monde_. She never took her eyes off him. And yet apparently Yakov was unmoved.

"Am I not still a woman?" she finally exclaimed, her patience exhausted. "Or is it that you're no longer a man?"

"I _am_ still a man!" replied Yakov indignantly. His mouth opened wide enough that she could see the fillings at the back of his molars. "But I'm _trying_ to be a gentleman!"

"Why?" said Lilia.

"Because you told me, repeatedly, that there was no way in hell we would ever be getting back together!"

Her heart turned over. "We're not," she said quickly. "Out of the question." 

"Then what's the point of playing with me like this? Lilia, you're stunning, but I'm not here to prove that men still find you attractive. I don't deserve to be dragged into your midlife crisis. I thought you were a better person than that!"

It was a strangely flattering thing to be accused of. Her midlife crisis had come a decade earlier, as he well knew. She had not been a better person. He had left her because of it.

"No, I'm not... it's not like that..." 

She shook her head, immeasurably frustrated. Why must he be so unbelievably dense? Did he intend to force her to explain in detail exactly what she wanted him to put where?

"Not that we're getting back together," she repeated, lest he leap to another equally extreme conclusion. "But it's convenient, isn't it? We're both here, aren't we? It would clear the air. Get it out of our systems. I know we both want it."

It was not as if she was suggesting something completely new: they had a history of _just sex_. But she wasn't entirely certain that she believed it herself.

"Oh," said Yakov stiffly.

"Yes. So there's nothing to worry about. Except for the fact that Yura will be home in two hours."

"So is _that_ why you gave him..."

"Yasha, you old fool," said Lilia. "Be quiet. You don't know anything."

"You say things like that to me and then expect me to sleep with you?"

What was this? Lilia couldn't believe her ears. Could he possibly have failed to realise that she had meant it affectionately? 

She lifted her chin. "Are you turning me down?"

"No!" said Yakov hurriedly. "No, not at all."

"Good!"

 _Because then I would have had to leave the country,_ she thought, her cheeks heating even beyond the influence of vodka and desire.

"Lilia," he said, sounding almost bashful, "I... no, never mind."

"No?" she echoed.

"No," he said decisively. "Come here."

***

Because they were no longer young, they made it all the way into her bedroom.

Lilia pulled open the buttons of his shirt and pushed it from his broad shoulders. She ran her hands admiringly across his chest, fleshy but solid, covered thickly with curls of greying hair. All in all he was magnificent, glorious. So thought Lilia – perhaps she was biased. If one's ideal were the _ephebe,_ one might disagree, but it had never been Lilia's.

"Oh, you beauty," she said. "Yasha, you jewel."

Why she was unable to shut up at times like this, she had no idea.

"You flatterer," he murmured. He kissed her again and again, trailing kisses from forehead to ear, down the curve of her neck and then back up again, as if he wanted to reassure himself of her physical reality. "Don't stop. It's working. I'm putty in your hands."

 _Not quite yet,_ thought Lilia, reaching down to palm his cock through his trousers. Yakov caught his breath, surprise mixed with pleasure. He wasn't hard yet but she didn't hold it against him; he was an old man and there was time yet. And he was still a good handful.

"Are you?" she asked, rubbing harder. "Are you really?"

"Lilia," was his only answer. "Lilechka. My God."

He was fumbling behind her back, entirely incompetently, with the tie of her dress. And she had worn a wrap dress on purpose this evening solely because of its ease of removal. She had to do everything herself. Lilia stepped backwards out of his grasp, untied the tie, and let her dress fall to the floor. She wasn't wearing anything underneath it.

Yakov stared at her like a teenage boy who has never seen a woman in the flesh before.

He had never made a habit of telling her she was beautiful. They had both known she was beautiful. Other people told her this all the time: people she had never spoken to in her life, people who had only ever seen her from the distance of the fourth circle. It was a cheap compliment, trite, dulled into meaninglessness by repetition. 

She would have been glad to hear it from him tonight.

She had never been shy about her body: it was the tool of her chosen profession, and it had carried her to the pinnacle of the ballet world. Yet she was still conscious of the fact that it had been years since Yakov had seen her in the nude. Even in her mid-fifties, she still danced. But their divorce had been a decade ago, before her retirement from the Bolshoi, and there was no substitute for morning classes every day and performances every night.

"If you're disappointed," she said, settling instinctively with her arms in a preparatory pose, "you can say so now."

She sketched an ironic little _ronde de jambe_ , running a bare, pointed big toe across the Persian carpet. 

Yakov appeared to have temporarily lost the power of speech. He stepped forwards and pulled her hard into his arms. His skin was hot against her chest, his stomach pressed against hers, a fever of touch, but it wasn't enough. His open shirt sagged from his shoulders, still tucked into his trousers; Lilia thrust her hands into it, pulling out his shirttails. Together they applied themselves to his zip.

There was nothing attractive about stepping out of a pair of trousers. Not even the greatest dancer in the world could have made it look graceful. Yakov, who was not the greatest dancer in the world, started to lean on her shoulder, thought better of it, swore, and sat down on the edge of the bed with a grumble. He couldn't even make it look graceful while sitting down.

"Socks too," said Lilia, looking over her shoulder and trying to suppress a laugh as she climbed into bed.

A few moments later all thought of laughter faded when Yakov rolled towards her and took her into his arms. 

For a time it was glorious; then his caresses became maddening. He touched her as if she were something rare and precious and breakable, as if he were being scored for artistry as well as technical skill. He touched her as if they had all night. They were both starving and he seemed determined to impress by cooking a three-course dinner. 

"It doesn't need choreography, Yasha," she said, impatient. "Just get on top of me and fuck me."

Yakov made a questioning noise, stilled his hand where it had been caressing the crease of her inner thigh. "You're ready?"

"Please, I was ready months ago." She paused. "But get the lube first, it's in the drawer."

He did as she said. 

And that first moment when he slid into her made all her waiting worthwhile.

***

Yakov lay next to her, still breathing hard, his chest filling so deeply that she couldn't help but admire his lung capacity. It reminded her of a production of _Giselle_ where Albrecht had carried on gasping for breath so showily after his collapse that the girl who danced Giselle had actually thrown a tantrum about it after the performance.

There was a little hitch in Yakov's breath, as if he'd been about to say something and swallowed it at the last moment.

"What is it?" 

"Nothing."

"I know your nothing, Yasha."

A little pause.

"I thought I ought to mention that I got tested a few years ago," he said finally. "All clear. And there hasn't been any need since then..."

A few years ago, she thought. _She_ had slept with him a few years ago. She scratched her nails lightly across his skin, enjoying the little rustling sound they made in his chest hair. She couldn't resist the urge to tease a little. 

"No one else since me, then?"

An awkward silence. Perhaps not. Perhaps he was embarassed by it, although it surely couldn't have been for any lack of opportunity on his part.

What _she_ found embarassing was the fact that she was lying in bed with her ex-husband actually discussing their failure to use a condom. He'd obviously taken to heart those lectures he gave his athletes about safe sex. Nothing could be more ironic: it had never occurred to either of them to think about these things back when they had actually mattered.

"It's not like I can get pregnant now," she said. "So there's nothing to worry about."

Yakov made a little grunt of acknowledgment. "I wasn't worried. I trust you. I just thought you might want to know."

It was typical, she thought. Five minutes after having sex and they still couldn't talk to each other. This was why they had divorced.

She was relieved to have been reminded of this. It meant that she could now guiltlessly enjoy the fact that Yakov, her handsome and irresistable Yasha, had rolled towards her and was kissing her again.

"Unfinished business," he said, in between the kisses.

"Mmm, yes," she replied, spreading her legs a little wider as he made his way slowly downwards. "Go on, I... yes, please..."

He hadn't forgotten what she liked, he still knew, he was just as good as ever. Perhaps better. But Lilia had no time to reflect on the fine points of his technique. She was concentrating on keeping her exclamations to a volume that the neighbors wouldn't overhear.

***

Too soon, the unforgiving digital numbers of the bedside clock announced that the ballet was drawing to a close. How they dragged themselves away from each other, Lilia hardly knew.

She hurriedly dressed and fixed her hair while Yakov picked up in the sitting room. She found him putting the half empty bottle of vodka back into the cabinet, and collapsed onto the sofa with a sigh. He sat down beside her and turned on the television, one of those unbearable political talk shows that he liked to watch in the evenings. It might as well have been in Estonian for all that Lilia cared: the words just flowed past her. She felt giddy; she had to fight to stop herself from giggling. She could still feel the little aftershocks of her last orgasm.

"If he doesn't come home on time after all this," she said, "I'm going to murder him."

The look on Yakov's face made her giggle after all. "Why, was that not enough for you?" 

She shrugged. In reply she laid her hand on his thigh and squeezed lightly. When the sound of the key came in the lock, only a few minutes later, she had just enough presence of mind to remember to fold her hands chastely in her own lap.

Yuri came through the door already pulling off his tie, as if it had been choking him all evening.

"I'm back!" he announced, like he thought they'd been counting down the seconds until his return. "I got a taxi outside afterwards like you said, it was all fine."

For once there was no moody teenage silence. Yuri was bubbling over with information. His seat had been a very good one (she knew this, she had paid for it); the people next to him had been surprised to see a fifteen-year-old at the ballet alone, but he'd given them no reason to complain, he'd even turned his phone off before the announcement; he'd bought a smoked salmon sandwich and a Pepsi at the bar during the intermission. He would have given her the whole plot of the ballet (she, who had learned every step straight from Ulanova) if she hadn't interrrupted.

"Not now," she said, trying to muster the severity of a ballet mistress while feeling far too relaxed and satisfied with life. "I'll ask you for a full report tomorrow morning. It's well past your bedtime already."

Yuri looked sulky. "It's a rest day tomorrow. And you _told_ me to go to the ballet, I came right back, it's not like I..."

"To bed!" barked Yakov. "Don't you dare contradict Lilia Mikhailovna! I expect your lights to be out in fifteen minutes!"

"All right, all right, I'm going," said Yuri. He started to leave, then paused in the door to the hallway. "Thank you for the ticket, Lilia Mikhailovna."

"You're welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed the ballet. Good night, Yura."

They watched him leave. The political talk show played on and on. The silence descended between them. This was the difficult moment, when sentiment might threaten to creep in. 

By comparison the sex had been relatively straightforward. Immediately afterwards she had been too overwhelmed by physical satisfaction to think. But Yuri's return had operated, with delayed action, like a splash of cold water in the face. Now her mind was working again, awakening to a full consciousness of their delicately balanced situation. 

_Oh Lilia. You didn't. You didn't. What are you going to do now?_

She could hear Yakov breathing. She didn't dare look in his direction, lest he view it as an invitation to say something to her. It would be just like him to spoil the evening by attempting retrospectively to turn perfectly satisfying sex into some sort of emotionally meaningful encounter. It was essential for her to forestall this. If only it weren't so comfortable sitting on the couch beside him.

Lilia stretched her legs, flexing her feet and pointing her toes. She could sense his gaze following the movement. A little leap of alarm clutched at her chest. She got to her feet more quickly than she had intended, an unexpected demand on muscles beginning to grow chill and stiff after their novel exertion.

"It's late," she said. "He's not the only one who needs his sleep."

And she fled.


	2. Chapter 2

That night Lilia slept better than she had in a long while.

In the morning she lay deliciously in bed, watching the sunlight paint itself across the ceiling and slowly doing a few simple stretches. _It is like thirst,_ she thought to herself. _It is!_ She didn't know why she had resisted so long. It had been perfect; it had been everything she had wanted.

The satiation of her desire lasted until she saw Yakov again. He stumbled into the kitchen a good hour and a half later than usual. She could hardly talk; she had only gotten out of bed fifteen minutes earlier. But she carried on tidying up the few dishes in the sink, not worrying too much about keeping quiet. A little bit of the clatter of cutlery was its own reproach. She hated doing the dishes in the morning. Her hands got so dry that all the expensive lotions in the world could hardly make any difference. Therefore this was his job. 

"Morning," he said, his voice sounding a little hoarse.

"Morning," she replied. She didn't turn to look at him. "The coffee is on."

You would have thought that a night of passion would have been enough to get everything out of her system. But no. As soon as she heard his voice, a wave of desire had swept over her, almost irresistable in its power. For a moment of delirious need it felt as if her whole body were dissolving. Her muscles clenched and fluttered inside her, relaxing in anticipation of him. She was a flower whose petals opened as it turned towards the sun.

If he had touched her, so much as a finger, she would have melted into his arms. She stood at the sink, her back as straight as a ruler, making no sign. He would have to take the step himself. But he just cleared his throat and scratched at his side. (The soft, tender skin of his side; the flesh which she had grasped and dug her nails into only twelve hours earlier.)

 _So that's how it's going to be,_ thought Lilia. _Well, then, that's how it will be._

She clattered the cups a little more loudly as she stacked them by the side of the sink.

"I'll do the rest of those," he said.

"I've started now," she said.

A small sigh. "Then I'll go out and get the paper."

By the time Yuri emerged from his own bedroom an hour later, they were finishing breakfast and arguing over the newspaper about whether it was worth going to the new 'Nefertiti and the Valley of the Kings' exhibition at the Hermitage, or the Tarkovsky exhibition at the Russian Museum, or perhaps both. It was as if nothing had happened the previous night. And, Lilia concluded, it was better that way.

All week it continued to be as if nothing had happened. They ate their meals and supervised training sessions at the sports club and went out to buy groceries and listened to the news together in the evenings. In all respects Yakov's behavior was exemplary, which made it easier for Lilia to maintain her own rigorous self-control. Not that it was easy – but there was, of course, no other alternative. Thank heavens they were able to behave like sensible adults.

It continued until the following Tuesday, when they sent Yuri off to the Mikhailovsky to see _Giselle_. Yakov shut and locked the door firmly behind him. Then he turned to Lilia, put his arms around her and kissed her passionately.

"You have no idea how long this week has been for me," he said, breaking away and gazing into her eyes.

"Of course I do," said Lilia. "Come on. Let's not waste any time."

***

Despite all their discretion, the memory of those glorious Tuesday evenings could not help but color the rest of the week for Lilia. Sometimes she found herself smiling a little smile to herself at the beauties of the world – the colors of the autumn birch leaves or the intense blue of the sky. Her dancers at the Mariinsky discovered that she was capable of occasional praise and even of forgiveness. And once or twice she reserved a studio for herself at the end of the day so that she could dance just for the joy of it, because she longed to employ her body and this was the simplest way.

She wasn't the only one. Arriving at the rink one afternoon to put Yuri through his paces, she saw Yakov out on the ice already, gingerly and soberly resurrecting his waltz jump – in fact performing three in sequence, which she supposed was not unimpressive for a man of his age and somewhat expanded girth. She put her hands together to applaud – half ironically, half in earnest – and then thought better of it and slid them into the pockets of her down coat instead. 

(It was the marigold yellow one. When she'd bought it along with its beige twin, she had thought that she would wear the other far more. She had been wrong.)

Quietly she lingered by the edge of the rink, her head lowered, as if she were a member of the _corps de ballet_ in a long stand during Act IV of _Swan Lake_. Discreetly and beautifully inconspicuous, neither seeing nor being seen, except as part of the background. It worked.

Only when Yuri glided out onto the ice did she stir herself, stepping forwards to rest her gloved hands on the boards.

"Well, Yura? Your free program, I think?"

***

None of her friends had been told about Yakov, not in so many words. They knew that he was living with her, of course; they might have surmised that the two of them were getting along well, if only from the fact that Lilia's complaints about him were brief and trivial. Their brunches were occasionally confessional – her friends did know about her history with Sergei Lisitsyn – but something in her shied away from the idea of sharing anything but the most banal and obvious facts about Yakov.

Yet when she met Zoya for a solo lunch at the Literary Cafe, things went differently. As the meal drew to a close Lilia had the distinct feeling that she was being scrutinised.

"What is it, Zoya?"

Her friend studied her over the remains of a pavlova with cloudberry jam. "Lilya, you're sleeping with him, aren't you?"

Lilia shot back instinctively: "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're glowing," said Zoya accusingly. "You've been glowing for weeks now. It's unmistakable."

"Didn't I tell you about that new anti-ageing serum I've started using? It's from Korea, something to do with snails, it really is miraculous..."

"Bullshit, Lilya. Utter and total bullshit."

This was why Lilia was so fond of Zoya. Although perhaps at the moment her bluntness was less than convenient.

Lilia glanced around the cafe before answering in a low voice. "All right. Yes. I am. Whenever we can get Yuri out of the apartment, which isn't nearly often enough for me. Are you happy now?"

Zoya frowned at her. "I wouldn't say _happy_."

"It's his... I don't even know how to describe it," said Lilia weakly. "He has this... this raw animal magnetism. I can't resist it. I can't say no to him."

Although well aware that she was perhaps reversing the circumstances of the seduction, Lilia felt that this conveyed the emotional truth of the situation. She had certainly been unable to resist him.

"You mean he's hung like a donkey," said Zoya. She had obviously seen footage of his later exhibition skates, which had taken place after the seismic advent of spandex in Soviet figure skating.

Lilia had no desire to deny this; it was a fact. Still, as in ballet, having the right physical endowment was necessary but not sufficient.

"It's not just that," she replied.

But this sounded flat and inadequate. She pondered, as she had for most of her career, how to put the mysteries of the physical into words. She had never succeeded, so she decided to take another tack.

"And after all," she added, "I'm not in the grave yet! I deserve a little more fantastic sex before I go!"

Zoya nearly choked. "Lilia, you've had men all over the world! You had Americans back when we weren't even meant to be _speaking_ to them! You had Sergei Lisitsyn wrapped around your little finger and he was young enough to be your son. Don't condemn yourself to settling for proximity, just because you're not dancing anymore! You could have any man you wanted."

"You are such a flatterer," said Lilia. "Not any more. I'm nearly sixty."

"Give that snail serum a few more weeks to work."

At that Lilia laughed till she cried. She was in fact only fifty-five – but when she was with Yakov, she felt nineteen again. Just like when they'd first met.

"Oh, Zoya, it's terrible," she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "I don't know what I ought to do."

"Don't tell me you're falling back in love with him," said Zoya.

"No," said Lilia. "No, of course not. I... no."

She wasn't a foolish girl any more; she had learned not to confuse raw physical lust with anything more idealised. In the past this confusion had led her into all sorts of snares and traps. Like a twenty-five year marriage.

"Then enjoy the fantastic sex while it lasts," said Zoya sagely, as if life could ever be that simple. "And then when he moves out – December, isn't it? – forget about him and get on with your life."

Lilia resolved that this was exactly what she would do. Zoya was absolutely right. December, after the Grand Prix Final. It was only six weeks away.

***

It wasn't as if she thought of nothing but Yakov. She had so much else to think about. If her dancers at the Mariinsky, the best in the world, had not been enough to keep her occupied, then there was the endless fascination of watching Yuri's development as an artist. Of course she had taught before – she had taught ballet – but the lifecycle of a figure skater was like a mayfly. In less than a year she was watching him evolve from a child into a potential world champion.

You might say that she had seen it before in Victor, but Victor had been Yakov's. She had been his choreographer, nothing more. Yuri was different – Yuri was _hers_.

At Rostelecom, the strength and beauty embodied in his performance moved her to tears. He embodied everything she had dreamt for him when choreographing the program. Alone in a studio tucked under the eaves of the Mariinsky, surrounded by a hundred reflections of herself, she had listened to Allegro Appassionato over and over again, moving to the music, trying to find the inspiration within it. She had done her best to imagine herself young and impetuous and full of passionate intensity. It had not been at all difficult. 

And now, here on the ice, in the midst of a sporting competition, as a boy of fifteen, Yuri had taken her creation and given it the transcendent stamp of art.

If he had been one of her ballet dancers she would have been watching from backstage, hidden amidst the dim and comforting thickets of curtain and rigging and stray pieces of set. Here, standing beside the Kiss and Cry, she was lit by pitiless lights with a television camera shoved into her face. She had never cried onstage, not until that last night at the Bolshoi when she knew she was about to say goodbye to it all. Now she couldn't help herself. She put one hand to her face, trying to hide the tears that were gathering in her eyes. 

That was when she felt Yakov's hand on her shoulder blade. Cushioned by the down of her coat, it rested so lightly, as if he were afraid that she might shatter if he pressed too hard. It seared her. Her eyes welled over; a tear rolled down her cheek. She dipped her head to wipe it away, ashamed of herself, not wanting to take her eyes off Yuri for a moment. 

_December,_ she thought. _December._ It was coming so soon. And after that the two of them would leave her, as they had always planned to do. She would become a dry, bitter, lonely old woman – what her young students had no doubt always believed her to be.

Lilia gulped back her tears. One might be allowed to weep for beauty, but never self-pity.

Yakov patted her gently on the back once or twice. As Yuri bowed to acknowledge the applause and cheers from the stands, he offered her a few tissues. She noisily blew her nose, both abashed and touched by this small public gesture.

 _It doesn't mean anything,_ she told herself. _He's just treating me like another one of his students._

***

She was so cold; she was always cold, accustomed to the sub-tropical warmth of a well-managed ballet studio. In previous years, living alone, she had been able to take advantage of the district central heating in Piter and Moscow to keep her own apartment at a temperature which meant that she didn't have to spend her evenings in rollneck cashmere jumpers and fingerless cashmere gloves, or her nights wearing silk long underwear under her pyjamas, burrowed under two heavy feather duvets. 

After Rostelecom, and the early snowfall, she began to feel the drafts whistling through the windowframes and settling around the floorboards. She turned the heat up, only to be assailed immediately by complaints from her two new housemates when they came home from the rink at the end of the day.

"It's boiling in here!" said Yuri.

"If you don't turn the heat down," said Yakov, "you'll have me sweating like a pig."

Lilia got up from the couch. "Yura, you have the metabolism of a teenage boy! And as for you, Yasha, you have far too much insulation!"

Then, accepting the inevitable, she stalked off into her bedroom to put on another layer.

"You ought to wear a hat," she heard Yakov saying behind her as he went to adjust the thermostat. 

By bedtime she could barely feel her fingers anymore. Usually she sat up in bed to read a little, but that night she dove under the covers right away. It was too late. The chill had taken hold of her. She lay there shivering fruitlessly, unable to imagine ever being warm again. The cold had brought the ache back into her left hip, more than a decade after the injury.

Finally she threw back the duvets and leapt out of bed before the shock of the cold air could register. She pulled her robe around her and strode out into the hallway. For a moment she glanced towards Yuri's room, from which the sound of music still emanated. Then, very quietly, she knocked on Yakov's door.

After a short pause he opened it, faintly bleary-eyed. He was wearing Liberty pyjamas that she had given him for New Year's, quite a few years ago now. Strawberry Thief was the name of the pattern; he looked oddly good in florals, she thought. Yet the cotton fabric was thin and the top button of the pyjama top was undone, showing his grey, untidy chest hair. How was he not freezing? Just looking at him made her cold.

"What is it?" he said in a low voice, as if he thought something was wrong.

"Come to bed with me," she said. "It's so cold."

His eyes widened. He cast a cautious look towards Yuri's door. "But he's..."

"Just until I can warm up," she said. "That's all. You know he never wakes up before we do, he'll never notice."

"Well, I..."

Desperate times called for desperate measures. "Please, Yashenka."

He grunted in acknowledgment and followed her into her room. There was no conversation between them in the dim room as they climbed into bed together. This was a serious matter.

Lilia slid hurriedly towards Yakov, letting him pull her into his arms. He was a furnace, soft and warm. She slipped her icy fingers through the gap between his pyjama top and bottoms to warm them against the mysteriously silky skin of his side. He shivered once, all over, but made no complaint.

"How can you possibly be so warm?" she asked, marvelling. "It's so unfair."

"You're the one who's cold," said Yakov. His thumb played across the curve of her hipbone. "Because you're so thin. Now that you're retired, you could stand to eat a bit more..."

He paused as if waiting for the automatic rejoinder: _and you could stand to eat a lot less._ Yet whatever the scale might read, it was impossible to be critical when he was so warm, solid and – truth be told – invitingly embraceable.

"Don't say that," she said. "I think you're perfect."

"You have odd ways of showing it."

"I don't want you to get an exaggerated sense of your own importance."

"There's no danger of that while you're around."

They kissed for a little while. Then Yakov started to chuckle.

"What is it?"

"When you came to the door... it was just like that song you always used to listen to. You know." In a hushed voice, he sang in English: " _Heathcliff, it's me, it's Cathy, I've come home..._ "

"Shh, he'll hear."

" _...and I'm so cold... Open up your window..._ "

She kissed him lightly, to shut him up, but she couldn't stop giggling herself.

"Yasha, shush," she whispered, kissing him again and again to the accompaniment of his own low chuckles. "Shush. Stop it."

"My darling," he murmured. "Lilechka."

It was a ridiculous pet name. In all her life, since she was a child, no one else had dared to use for her. 

"That's better," she said.

He drew her even closer, rumbled into her ear: "Are you warmer now, Lilechka?"

"I think I'll never be cold again," said Lilia.

***

In the morning she awoke to find that she was still in his arms. She drifted into consciousness so slowly, full of the sheer physical pleasure of being alive, lying at full length in a beautiful soft bed, gloriously warm, breathing in unison with the man who lay beside her. For once nothing hurt – she hardly counted the arthritis in her big toes. She wanted to purr like a cat but contented herself with nuzzling against Yakov's neck. His skin was pliant and musky and gently creased, like a very well-loved, age-softened piece of leather. That was what he was, she thought: softened by age. And thank goodness for it.

Lost in the deliciousness of sleep and the unaccustomed warmth and the intoxicating scent of him, she murmured against his neck: "I love you."

His breath caught. She felt the thump of his heart, his hand tightening on her shoulder. Predictably, and infuriatingly, Yakov was already wide awake. 

_I should have known it,_ she thought, much too late. _He wasn't snoring._

"You know I love you, Lilechka," he said, his voice so quiet that she could hardly hear. "You know that I never stopped."

"Such a romantic."

"It's the truth. I believe in being honest with myself."

 _Unlike you._ She heard the implicit reproach, whether or not he had meant it that way. Once upon a time it would have been the start of a new argument. Instead she sighed, caught between her undeniable desires and the cold truths of reality. 

So he loved her; so he had loved her through the years when they had hardly been able to speak to one another without shouting. What did that mean, when it came down to it? What good had it done to either of them? Nothing and none.

"Oh Yasha," she said, "what on earth are we going to do with ourselves?"

In mute reply, he kissed her.

"Whatever you want," he said afterwards. "When have I ever done anything else?"

 _You asked for a divorce,_ Lilia wanted to say. _You left me._

But that was unfair. She had agreed. She had deserved it. She had thought that they would both be happier apart. She had not wanted to live with him any more than he with her. It was only in retrospect that she had mourned.

Seryozha had said he loved her too. Perhaps he had even believed it. 

_Love is cheap,_ thought Lilia.

 _We'll see,_ thought Lilia. 

So she said nothing at all, only lay and felt his hand slowly stroking her shoulder until, a few minutes later, the alarm went off.

That day, no words passed between them about what had happened. But the next night, even chillier, he came to her without being asked. And the night after that. And the night after that.

The days ticked down towards the Grand Prix Final.

***

Lilia hated flying. Yet it was an unfortunate fact that her career, even in retirement, demanded worldwide travel. At least the flight from Piter to Barcelona was relatively short.

So she told herself as she made her slow way down the aisle of the Aeroflot plane, with Yuri in front of her and Yakov following so close behind that she could sense his breath on the back of her neck. It was not that she was afraid of flying; it was just that she hated the enforced inactivity, the hours spent trapped in such cramped and unbeautiful quarters.

 _We ought to have paid for the upgrade,_ she thought, settling into her middle seat. _It would have been worth it._

On her left Yakov was already reading. He was taking up the whole of the armrest, his elbow hanging over into her space. It was impossible not to be aware of his breadth, his substance, the width of his shoulders and the rest of him beneath that. For once she was not at all happy about it. She nudged him.

He shrugged. "I can't make my shoulders any narrower, Lilia."

"Well, you could at least be considerate about it."

On her right Yuri was intently studying his phone. He might still have the pipestem build of a boy – still smaller than her by some margin – but his long legs were canted in her direction, taking up half the space under the seat in front of her.

It was unjust; it was a travesty. Of course they had wanted her in the middle, they both had thought that they could presume upon her. As if she were so petite that a 45-centimeter-wide seat wasn't painfully claustrophobic for her as well. It wasn't true. She hated them both. She hated all men. Was there no respect in the world anymore? She buckled her seatbelt with angry, showy movements.

Neither seemed to notice. Yuri hadn't even looked up from his phone. He was scrolling at high speed through Instagram, so quickly that you would have thought he would be incapable of taking any of it in.

"Off," said Lilia.

"They haven't made the announcement yet."

Lilia said nothing, only raised an eyebrow. She wasn't going to dignify that with a response. She didn't have to. Yuri turned off the phone.

To be obeyed gave Lilia only the most evanescent satisfaction.

Through the small, smeared plastic window, the sky was grey and leaden. The wind battered across the tarmac, driving clumps of slush into the window. They hadn't even pushed back from the stand yet. She checked her watch. Twenty minutes late already. 

"Oh hey, look," said Yuri. "They're going to de-ice the plane!"

Perhaps she was slightly afraid of flying. At least in weather like this. She reached for the inflight magazine and spent an excruciating three minutes leafing through pages of tasteless perfumes that she had no intention of wearing. Then she stuck it back into the seat pocket.

This was ridiculous. How many hundreds and thousands of flights had she taken in her life? She had crisscrossed the Soviet Union with Aeroflot, from Tallinn to Simferopol, Tashkent to Baku. She had fought her way through departure lounges overflowing with whole families and all their worldly belongings, stepping onto a flight that others had waited days to board. She had landed in Yakutsk when the weather was so cold that they didn't dare shut down the engines on the tarmac. She had toured the world, flown to Havana via Gander to dance for Castro, and (even worse) done the twenty-four hour trip to Buenos Aires via Algiers and El Salvador. But she had been young and foolish then – and she had also chain smoked her way across the Atlantic.

Lilia sighed and slipped off her shoes. While the plane was de-iced and taxied slowly to the runway, she occupied herself with a few simple foot exercises. No one was so good, or so old, that they could afford to neglect the flexibility and strength of their toes and arches. There was something calming about the familiar stretches, even if she was dubious about the cleanliness of the airplane carpet.

Her exercises occupied her until the plane finally took off. A gust of wind as they climbed away from the airport; a suddden lurch in the pit of her stomach. She bit her lip, clutching involuntarily at the arm of the seat – but only for a moment. She forced herself to fold her hands neatly in her lap. 

It was only turbulence. It was nothing. It was just that she hated not knowing, hated that it was out of her control...

Oh God. Another gust.

Without looking up from his book, without saying a syllable, Yakov nudged her knee with his open hand. Gazing fixedly ahead, Lilia clutched it gratefully. With her own hand damp with sweat, she clung inconspicuously to him until the plane finally broke through the clouds and leveled off at cruising altitude.

Then she released him, sighed, wiped her hand on her leggings, and beckoned to the stewardess for a glass of wine.

"I can't believe they don't serve vodka anymore," she said to Yakov in an undertone. "What sort of airline doesn't serve vodka?"

"I just count myself lucky," said Yakov, "that I don't have to fly in Antonovs or Yaks anymore."

He went back to his book.

***

Despite years of good intentions – and a few scattered days of actual effort – Lilia's spoken English was still nonexistent. This saved her from some of the inevitable off-ice drama at figure skating competitions. She simply nodded and feigned ignorance, even if some of the time she understood perfectly well what was being said.

Her French on the other hand was passable, if broken, and this meant that there was no escape from Nathalie Leroy at the breakfast buffet. She was alone; Yakov had left her in bed two hours ago. She felt no resentment towards the juniors practice session that had called him away. She was perfectly happy to drowse over her mint tea and croissant, gazing out at the silvery, distant sea. A booking at the hotel spa afterwards would be ample consolation.

And yet there was Nathalie Leroy, settling opposite her with a plate of eggs and bacon. 

"May I join you?"

"Feel free," said Lilia, because it seemed already too late to say anything else.

Nathalie was always warm. Perhaps she thought they were friends; perhaps she felt sorry for her.

"I should know by now that there's never going to be maple syrup at these buffets," said Nathalie mournfully, buttering her toast.

Lilia made a polite, noncomittal noise of sympathy.

Usually Nathalie wanted to discuss ballet. This she did with great enthusiasm and all the insight that one would expect from an Olympic gold medallist in ice dance – which was to say, a good degree of insight, if perhaps not quite as much as she believed. 

Today was different. Nathalie smiled at her expectantly; Lilia knew what was expected.

"I hear that Jean-Jacques is engaged."

Nathalie beamed. "Yes! Did you see J.J.'s Instagram post? We couldn't be happier! Bella is such a wonderful girl, and they've known each other for so long, it's like she's part of the family already."

"Yura told me about it," said Lilia. "They're very young to marry."

Nathalie shrugged. "They're in love! They're ready to start their life together. What should they be waiting for? I was only twenty when I married Alain. He was twenty-two. It did us no harm."

"I was nineteen," said Lilia.

She looked down at her bare right hand. However well manicured and moisturised it might be, it showed her age. And yet it was almost impossible to distinguish the small indentation that marked the place where she had once worn her wedding ring.

 _And I was a little fool,_ she thought. _As most nineteen-year-olds are. Heavens, what we managed to squander between us._

Well, there was no use. Whatever the mistake, there was no turning back time; every dancer learned that early. Whatever she and Yakov had won for themselves now, for however long it lasted – this was what she had, and this would have to be enough.

"And it's not as if they've eloped," said Nathalie, her cheerfulness sounding a little more determined. "They haven't even set a date yet! J.J. wants to wait until the end of the season, which I think is very mature of him."

Lilia couldn't bring herself to offer an opinion on the maturity – or lack thereof – of Jean-Jacques Leroy. Certainly his skating showed very little refinement.

"No doubt that's wise," she said. "I wish them the best."

But Nathalie was distracted, gazing over Lilia's shoulder towards the buffet. "Oh, Alain is finally here! I thought he would never get out of the shower."

Like all good ice dancing couples, they seemed to move in unison, even if one of them was approaching with a tray of food and the other merely looking towards him in anticipation. Alain Leroy leaned over his wife and kissed her on the crown of her head before putting the tray down. In itself this was a small feat of balance.

"Second cup of coffee for you," he said, placing a full cup in front of Nathalie. "What a surprise, there was no maple syrup. Good morning, Lilia."

"Good morning, Alain."

Lilia did her best not to feel jealous. They were married, after all, and had been married for years. There was nothing inherently performative or showy about giving one's wife a morning kiss, even in public. 

Nor was there any reason to expect such treatment from Yakov. Without having to discuss the matter, they had kept their most recent affair entirely between themselves; they would hardly have survived as household names under the Soviets if they hadn't implicitly understood the need for discretion. Their private pleasures were just that – private. What business was it of anyone's whether they were lovers?

None. None whatsoever. So there was no call to feel jealous of Nathalie and Alain Leroy.

Lilia dabbed at her mouth with her paper napkin, folded it in half and put it on her plate next to the remains of her croissant. Then she gathered her wrap and settled it around her shoulders.

"If you'll excuse me," she said. "I have an appointment at the hotel spa."

***

Lilia arrived at the practice session perfectly relaxed. Even if a massage had never been on the cards – no one but Yakov or her own physio could be trusted with that – she had indulged in a full facial, aromatherapy and a salt scrub, which had been enough to cast off the stress and jet lag from the flight. She was warm, moisturised, faintly glowing. She was ready for the cold dry air of the rink. She was ready to support Yuri to victory. She was ready for anything that the Grand Prix Final might throw at her. So she thought.

She walked serenely through the service corridors of the venue, her heels echoing on the concrete floor. Whether at the Bolshoi or the Yubileyny Sports Palace or the Barcelona International Convention Center, there was a particular atmosphere backstage before a performance: the sense that all the chaos that swirled around one was converging, that it would come crashing together like breaking waves, all to create one transcendent moment of beauty as evanescent as sea spray. Lilia was not performing, of course, but she had made her own contribution to what she confidently believed would be Yuri Plisetsky's moment of triumph. In her stomach she felt a pleasurable flutter of anticipation.

Yet the mild uproar that she found in the warm-up room was not what she had expected, because it had nothing to do with figure skating. Yuri stood in a corner with Yakov, his arms folded, staring fixedly at Victor who was halfway across the room with Katsuki. He still wore his heavy outdoor hoodie; he obviously hadn't started his warm-up, despite the fact that Lilia was slightly late.

As soon as she heard what they were saying, she realised that the universe must be laughing at her. 

"He says they're _engagement rings_ ," Yuri was complaining. "And he says they're going to get married after Katsudon wins the Grand Prix Final!" 

"Vitya and Katsuki," said Yakov to her in exasperation. "Apparently they went and got engaged!"

"Don't you mean Jean-Jacques and...?"

Lilia couldn't remember the name of the boy's fiancée. She frowned in the direction of Victor, who smiled at her and waved showily in a way clearly calculated to show off the gold ring on his right hand. So Yakov had it right after all.

With her, Victor's warmth had never been anything but calculated. Lilia ignored him.

"It's no concern of yours," she told Yuri. "Why haven't you started warming up?"

"Did you hear what I said? He says they're going to get married after Katsudon wins the Grand Prix Final!" 

"Don't let Vitya tell you who's going to win the Grand Prix Final," Yakov told Yuri. "He isn't God."

"If you read the newspapers," said Lilia to Yakov, "you would think that people got married later these days. After moving in together and having children. Or not at all."

"Vitya couldn't possibly do anything the way normal people do things!"

Yuri made a noise of derision. "Normal? He got the idea from _J.J._ "

" _Vitya_ ," said Yakov as if he were spitting a curse. "That boy will give me a heart attack one of these days!" 

Lilia had heard enough of this. She took Yakov firmly by the arm and spoke into his ear. "You'll give _yourself_ a heart attack one of these days, Yasha. Get hold of yourself. What does it matter?"

Yakov, his face brick red, muttered something that might possibly have been an apology. Then again it might not have been.

"I'm here to look after Yura," Lilia added in an undertone. "Not to look after you."

"Sorry, Lil," mumbled Yakov, discernibly this time.

 _So he does know how to apologise,_ thought Lilia. _Well, that's a first._ Who knew what new vistas of interpersonal communication might open up between them as a result? But she couldn't consider this now.

"I told you to start warming up," she said to Yuri. "You can't afford to waste any more time."

He nodded with a jerk of the chin. Then he did as she asked.

During Yuri's preparatory warm-up there was almost nothing for Yakov and Lilia to do. He was like a little toy soldier, or a ballerina pirouetting on top of a music box: after you wound him up, he went of his own accord. For a long while now, ever since she had met Yakov, Lilia had been thinking how curious it was that figure skaters had no equivalent of the morning class. Even as teenagers they were independent creatures in a way that even the most powerful and stubborn _prima_ (not that she was thinking of anyone in particular) could never be.

So she and Yakov sat side by side, on the terrible metal folding chairs generously provided for them by the Barcelona Convention Center, and watched over him. Lilia folded her arms. Though she wasn't really thirsty, she wished that she had a cup of tea in her hand. Something to do with herself. What she really would have liked was a cigarette, even though she had quit years ago. Even though it was impossible to smoke indoors anymore.

Restless and on edge, she impulsively said something that she hadn't been certain she would ever have the courage to say.

"Yasha, I've been thinking."

"Yes?" he replied warily, as if this were an uncharacteristic and ominous activity on her part.

"I've been thinking that it would be... cruel to uproot Yura before the end of the season, given how rapidly he's developing as an athlete. And an artist. Whether he wins or loses here, for him to have to move again – it could only be disruptive to his training." 

"Oh," said Yakov. He sounded uncertain and off balance, like he'd suddenly been asked to improvise to an unexpected piece of music. "Yes. A move is always a disruption. But it's not as if... well. You know what we agreed."

"Of course I do. I was the one who suggested it." 

"Which is why I never brought it up! I thought nine months would be enough of an imposition. God knows Yura isn't easy to live with. Do you think I would have asked you for help in the first place if I hadn't been desperate?"

"I've become fond of him," said Lilia, although surely they both knew that this was an understatement.

"He worships the ground you walk on," replied Yakov. 

There was little one could say in response to that. Of course it was a compliment. But still she wanted to cry out to him: _Why are we still talking about Yura? What about you, Yasha? How do *you* feel? What do *you* want?_

Of course she didn't say any of this. Instead she watched as Yuri tested his Theraband to its limits, twisting this way and that against the resistance of the rubber. He fought its pull as if he were exercising a personal grudge. Of course this was how Yuri conducted most of his life.

A long silence settled. She became conscious of the squeak of the competitors' shoes on the tiled floor.

"Well, if you're offering," said Yakov finally. 

"I seem to be," Lilia replied, annoyed.

"So we'll stay. Like you said, it's for the best. Until when?"

Lilia shrugged. With bared shoulders it would have been an expressive movement, but she was wrapped in a down coat with a heavy fur collar and therefore it probably appeared nothing more than equivocal.

"You know I'm renting out my apartment," he said. "So you can't expect me to just guess!"

So this was what he had made of her open arms, of her vulnerability. A question of profit. And they said that romance was dead.

"Until the end of the season," she told him, because she could hardly say _Yasha, please, don't ever leave me._ "Didn't I say that already?"

"Right," he said. "Till the end of the season. Good. That's settled then."

"Good," echoed Lilia. "Fine."

Yuri had worked his way up to practicing his jumps, big leaps with four rapid revolutions. In between jumps he would walk circles around the floor, staring at his feet. She and Yakov could have disappeared from the room and he would hardly have noticed. He would be on the ice in ten minutes.

Her heart was pounding too. Perhaps this wasn't the best time or place for this conversation. Except that she knew that she would never have dared to have it anywhere else. Yuri was jumping again. Now, now. Now or never.

"I'm – glad," she said, looking fixedly ahead at Yuri. "That you're staying."

She used not the plural 'you,' but the singular.

"Lilechka," said Yakov quietly. "I thought you would never ask."

She stole a glance in his direction, only to see that he was gazing back at her, holding his hat in his lap. There was a tenderness in his blue eyes that she had never expected to see from him again.

***

Lilia had let her hair down. Quite literally.

Tomorrow would be the gala, tomorrow would be the banquet, all of the formal celebration. Tomorrow she would once again be the proud choreographer, happy to spend a few hours shining in Yuri's reflected glory. Tonight she was celebrating on her own account. And unfortunately the young champion was cramping her style.

After the medal ceremony there had been all the usual fuss and congratulations, and the press interviews, and then the interminable wait for the anti-doping controls. ( _If it takes you that long to produce a urine sample,_ Lilia had snapped at Yuri afterwards, _then clearly you're not hydrating adequately._ )

By the time they got back to the hotel it had been nearly eleven. It would have been so easy to fall into bed – her own bed, alone – and avoid thinking about anything else until the morning. But as she stood at the door of her hotel room fighting with the keycard, she had looked down the hallway and seen Yakov unlocking his own door.

He had caught her eye. "Meet you in the hotel bar in ten minutes?"

She had almost turned him down. She had almost made a simple gesture of invitation towards her own room. Instead she had replied: "Make it twenty."

Of course she could have gone down to the hotel bar just as she was. She would have been perfectly presentable. After all she had dressed and made herself up with the knowledge that she would be in the eye of the international press, right down to the waterproof mascara. (She had expected to cry and she had been right.) Yet a mixed zone interview with Match TV was not at all the same thing as a quiet, collegial drink with one's artistic collaborator – and, perhaps incidentally, ex-husband.

So Lilia walked into the hotel bar dressed simply: a short skirt with tights and a black top with a scooped neckline. Her hair, still thick, and with the roots touched up just recently, hung long and loose to the small of her back. She had hurriedly flat-ironed it before coming downstairs.

All to impress a man who already lived with her, who saw her regularly wearing nothing at all, who remembered her at nineteen when the bloom had still been on the rose. And for what? _He certainly finds me attractive enough to sleep with,_ thought Lilia. Beyond that she dared not go. 

Yakov was sitting at the bar with a bottle of champagne already open and chilling in a bucket beside him. He gave her – if she was not deceiving herself – an appreciative look as she approached.

"Don't you ever miss _Sovetskoye Shampanskoye_?" asked Lilia, settling on the high bar stool beside him.

"Never," said Yakov, pouring her a glass. It was Veuve Clicquot.

"Me neither. Cheers."

They clinked glasses. 

"To us," said Yakov.

"To us," echoed Lilia after a moment of rapid thought. 

( _Does he mean...? To our victory, of course._ )

Twenty minutes later Yuri turned up in the bar, arriving as casually as if he had been strolling into the sitting room at home. Lilia had thought that Yakov had sent him to bed.

"Hey," he said, taking a seat on a bar stool near them. "What's happening?"

"What does it look like?" said Yakov. "I'm having a drink with Lilia."

Yuri shrugged. Obviously the answer wasn't exciting enough for him. He turned around to survey the room, lounging back with his elbows against the bar, resting a steadying foot on Yakov's bar stool. Lilia would have given him a slap on the ankle for that but Yakov, as indulgent as ever, just ignored it.

"Sit with dignity, Yura," she said, because she felt she ought to say something, but she didn't turn around to do it. There was the sound of a small shift in position. He'd moved his foot at least.

Yakov poured Lilia some more champagne. "Now that you're here," he said to Yuri, "I might as well tell you the news."

For a moment Lilia wonderered what it was. 

"Though the Grand Prix Final is over, Lilia Mikhailovna has decided to keep working with you. We'll be staying with her until the end of the season."

Yuri's eyes widened. "Because I won?"

"Because you still need the help!" barked Yakov.

"Your development as an artist is just beginning," said Lilia, as primly as she knew how. "This is a dangerous time: you mustn't be tempted to slacken your efforts. In fact you must redouble them. Continuity of training is essential."

"Oh. No. I mean, yeah. Wow."

"Thank Lilia Mikhailovna for her generosity," said Yakov.

Yuri seemed sincerely moved. "Thank you, Lilia Mikhailovna. I, I – really, thanks."

"You've done well," she told him. "Now you must do better. There's still much to improve."

"I will," he said staunchly. "I said I'd give you my body and soul, didn't I?"

Lilia was not a sentimental woman. Yet somehow, along the way, she had given this boy her heart in exchange. If he had stood to leave, she would have gotten to her feet and embraced him tenderly – as she had now become accustomed to doing. She would have held him for a moment and then sent him up to his room. But he showed no signs whatsoever of leaving.

"Can I get a Coke?" he asked the bartender.

For the next fifteen minutes, while Yuri regaled them both with an extensive deconstruction of his performance in the Grand Prix Final, Lilia drank heavily. She was dimly aware that he might be making cogent points about his future development as an artist. She just didn't care. For her the import of his words was lost behind a haze of champagne and frustration. She thought she might scream. Failing that, she thought she might get to her feet without a word and disappear up to her room – Yakov could listen to his protégé alone, if he found him so fascinating.

She could just imagine him saying afterwards, in indulgent tones, _well, he's just won an important victory._ It was the sort of excuse he'd made all the time for Victor's bad behavior.

Thankfully for both of them, Yakov finally spoke up. 

"Yura! If you're going to whine about your free program performance, then do it in the privacy of your own room. You're spoiling my drinking with Lilia."

Even this was not enough, because Yuri only shifted over to whining about his exhibition program instead. Apparently he found something indefinable lacking in the choreography, although she had heard no whisper of this from him previously. Lilia couldn't credit it. She took out her phone and started browsing through the social media commentary on the Grand Prix Final. Certainly there was no shortage.

When Otabek Altin stepped out of the elevator and into the hotel lobby, it was as if an angel of mercy had descended to earth. Yuri seemed to feel the same way: he called out "Beka!" and leapt off his stool as if he had been launched by a catapult. With an immense sense of relief, Lilia watched them disappear together.

"If I'm to go on working with Yura," she said to Yakov, "you have to promise me one thing."

Yakov swiveled fully towards her on the stool. "What? Tell him to shut up more often? Anything."

Taken aback by this sudden attention, Lilia forgot whatever it was she had meant to say. Instead she said something completely different.

"Before the next competition, get rid of that old scarf of yours."

Although he wasn't wearing it, he touched involuntarily at his neck. "My blue scarf? Why?"

"It's ancient! You never wear anything else to competitions! You've had it since..."

"Right before we divorced," said Yakov. "I remember. You gave it to me."

She remembered too. It had been his birthday – or three weeks after his birthday, which was the next time she had been in Piter. She had dashed into a department store on her way from Moscovsky Station and grabbed the most obvious, blandly inoffensive gift she could find. Of course it had been a decent scarf, a wool/cashmere blend. And of course she had taken thirty seconds to choose a color that matched his eyes. Perhaps she had even explained the choice when he opened it. 

She might have been sleeping with another man already, but she had wanted to demonstrate at least that she wasn't so much of a bitch as to intentionally choose an unflattering birthday gift for her estranged husband. 

Apparently she had succeeded.

"It's my lucky scarf," Yakov added, sounding affronted.

"Yasha, you superstitious peasant. Just because you were wearing it at Turin?"

"And Vancouver. And Sochi." He paused. "And tonight."

Because Yuri had won the Grand Prix Final, of course. But the way he looked at her when he said it... 

"Tonight," echoed Lilia, gazing back at him.

Yakov signalled to the bartender. "Another bottle. Veuve Clicquot 2004."

***

Lilia was grateful for the poise and the balance that she had developed and refined through decades of rigorous ballet training. Because she needed every ounce of it to stay upright.

Walking down the hotel hallway, her head was spinning worse than after the thirty-two fouette turns in _Swan Lake_. Much worse, because after that, after a suitable pause for applause, she would have been able to keep dancing. (Or she would have been able to once.)

Her partner, who ought to have steadied and supported her, was no use whatsoever. Yakov, who was easily double her weight, whom she had matched drink for drink, was stumbling from side to side like a badly trained bear trying to walk on his hind legs. She'd had to pluck her arm out of his to avoid being brought down by one of his sudden lurches.

"Yasha, you drunkard, you old sot... you..."

She couldn't get the words out, nearly overcome by soundless giggles. They had to be soundless, for even in her inebriated state she had not forgotten that several ISU and FFKK officials were staying on the same floor.

"Lilechka, my sparrow, take a look in the mirror. You're _wobbling_."

He sounded charmed. She was not charmed. Wanting to prove him wrong, she essayed a simple _arabesque à demi hauteur_. It was a mistake.

A woman emerging from a room in a silk bathrobe – the French judge, if Lilia recalled correctly – gave her a curious look, both conspiratorial and abashed. Then she disappeared into another room a few doors down.

 _Ah,_ thought Lilia. _Of course._

No doubt the official accommodation lists drawn up by the national federations had become rather inaccurate tonight. All international tours, whether in skating or ballet, degenerated inevitably into a sort of French farce.

Lilia smiled – and, despite the risk, she took his arm again. "Your room or mine?"

***

She had left the curtains open. The room was lit by the faint glow of the streetlights on the seafront. Yakov and Lilia bothered with neither the curtains nor the light switch, because they were dancing.

They were both drunk. There was no music. Her close-fitted skirt hindered anything but the most measured of steps. Lilia couldn't see her own feet, much less her partner's. And he was not a dancer, he had never been a dancer, whatever he might tell himself about the glories of his youth.

None of it mattered. Pressed close against him, she could sense the first ghost of his intentions, sense every movement before he thought of it himself. She could feel the rhythm of the music in his body. She followed him in a slow tango, so subtle that they hardly moved from the spot where they stood in their stockinged feet. She spun slowly, stepped back into his arms. Together, in perfect unison, they both sighed with pleasure.

Then he stepped on her toes.

"Sorry."

She kissed him lightly. "So clumsy, Yasha."

"I hope you can forgive me, Lilenka."

A little jolt went through her, disturbing her already tenuous balance. "Do you forgive _me_?" 

"For what?"

He settled his arms comfortably around her waist, kissed her neck as if there were nothing more natural. As if he could think of nothing whatsoever that might require his forgiveness. He began to sway with her again, humming a few out-of-tune notes that might have approximated a tango.

"For... you know... for everything..."

In her half drunken state, her mind recoiled from the thought of attempting to unravel the sins of decades of marriage. How heavy they had once seemed, tangled snarls of resentment like a terrible bird's nest in the hair. Her hair could break the teeth of a comb; she'd had knots so bad that sometimes the only solution had been to cut them out with scissors. That was what her relationship with Yakov had become in the end.

And yet now, despite it all, she felt so light. She was in his arms – Yakov, her ex-husband, her dearest, her once and future lover – and none of it mattered anymore.

"Not yet," said Yakov, his voice husky. "Not until you promise me that you'll marry me."

Lilia was left speechless. Her throat was dry, the remnants of the champagne suddenly metallic on her tongue. She swallowed hard, overcome.

He kissed her neck, murmured against her skin: "Well, Lilechka, what about it? Shall we... will you...?"

"Of course," she whispered into the dim air of the hotel room, a truth almost too great to be spoken aloud. 

Yakov sighed deeply, an exhalation so majestic that it made her wonder once again at his lung capacity. What had she done without him? It seemed that she had been moving for long years through a strange and shadowed land, all the while telling herself that all was well, that she was fine, that it was better this way. What an idiot she had been. 

"I thought you would never ask," she said, though in truth she had never allowed herself to hope.

He was rubbing gentle circles into the small of her back. "I never thought you would say yes."

"Neither did I," she confessed. "But I have."

Slowly and solemnly, Yakov lifted her off her feet and turned in a careful circle while holding her clasped in his arms. If she had extended her toes, she could have touched the ground. But she didn't do this until he had completed the full three hundred and sixty degrees.

"There," he said, setting her down again and kissing her on the forehead.

Only then did the absurdity of it all come home to her. Lilia, still tipsy, started to laugh. 

"Like Jean-Jacques and Bella. Like Vitya and his Yuri... And after all these years, to get married again! How ridiculous people will think we are!"

"Let them," said Yakov. "If it means that I have you."

She shook her head at him. "Oh, Yasha, you glorious fool. You foolish, foolish man."

"If I'm such a fool, Lilechka, why do you want to marry me?"

"Oh, that's easy," said Lilia, holding him close. "It's because of your raw animal magnetism."


End file.
